The Regiment-A Trilogy by John Dalmas

Author:John Dalmas [Dalmas, John ]
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Science Fiction
ISBN: 0-7434-8823-7
Publisher: Baen Publishing Enterprises
Published: 2004-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

31

Lord Kristal walked a trifle carefully; his arthritis was flaring up a bit. "We could have done this by cube or beam of course, and saved me the trip," he said. "But I like to see things live when I can. The touch of reality can make a difference."

The new peiok leaves were out and half expanded, sheltering the lawns with springtime's delicate green. The last time he'd been to Lake Loreen had been— That long ago? Early autumn—more than half a year. Then the leaves had shown the first touches of autumn color: yellow, bronze, scarlet.

"I'm glad you came down," Kusu answered, and grinned. "For a milestone of sorts."

They entered the Research Building, and Kusu turned right at the foot of the stairs, stopping at the elevators where he pushed a button. Hmh! thought Kristal. He noticed the knees. Otherwise we'd have walked up. Not much gets by this young man. The doors opened and they stepped on.

"Is Wellem around?" Kristal asked. "And your parents?"

"All three, and Laira and Konni. I'm under orders to bring you to lunch if at all possible. If you want to get with any of them singly, I don't suppose there'll be any difficulty with that either."

The elevator stopped and opened, and it was the roof they stepped out onto, which did not surprise His Lordship. It would have to be the roof; the thing didn't work through walls. A girl was there, a young lady with red hair, standing by the parapet. She turned toward them as they stepped out, as if she'd been watching something and heard the elevator doors open. The "something" had no doubt been the oroval which now was running up a branch of a peiok tree, its long tail undulating behind.

And there, sitting on an AG sled, was one of the three teleports Kusu had built.

Kristal returned his attention to the girl. "You must be Lotta Alsnor," he said. "The first person to teleport."

"Yes sir," she answered. "You're right, as usual."

He bowed slightly. "I understand you have other talents—qualities and skills that go beyond boldness. Please accept my admiration."

He turned to Kusu then. "Ernoman you said. There's an ocean between here and there. A horizon and— What? A hundred degrees of curvature? You said it only works on line of sight."

"I was wrong. And I hope you don't ask me to explain it. One of the problems with inventions that grow out of an intuitive leap is that you may not really understand how they work. And draw wrong conclusions from incomplete observations. Besides that, weak understanding can make things pretty tough to explain, let alone debug and modify. I can teleport objects to Offside Base on Seeren if I hit a limb at a tangent, more or less. It's as if it slides around the circumference then. But if I just aim as if to teleport something on a straight line with Seeren's mass in between, nothing happens. It just sits here; it doesn't go to the intervening mass or anywhere else.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.